


When Night Falls

by liptonrm



Category: Original Work
Genre: Assault, Blood and Gore, Fantasy, Gen, Grief/Mourning, Horror, Isolation, Magic, Post-Apocalypse, Violence
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2015-02-01
Updated: 2016-02-01
Packaged: 2018-03-10 00:37:15
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 11
Words: 3,477
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3270197
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/liptonrm/pseuds/liptonrm
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The apocalypse came in an abrupt flash, leaving one woman alone in a changing world. Monsters roam as she struggles to find a place to belong in what was left behind.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Dark

**Author's Note:**

> This started as a writing exercise on my blog and kind of took on a life of its own. I hope you all enjoy reading it as I've enjoyed writing it.

The sun was going down. Anne watched the shadows move, the day slipping by with every blink of her eyes. Cold air streamed across the porch, blowing her hair helter skelter around her face and sending dry leaves skidding around the yard, their dry rattle hardly louder than the blood pounding in her ears.

Night was coming and she was alone.

The electricity hadn't worked in days. Some transformer, somewhere, had burned out and that was it, no more lights, no more TV, nothing. She’d found that the silence was worse than the dark. She’d never realized how much noise there had been in her life, her life had had a constant soundtrack of random sounds; the pulse of a distant radio, the rumbling din of a TV switched on low in the background. Her world had gone quiet and dark all at the same moment.

The sun dipped below the horizon and the streetlights didn't come on. Her eyes strained to make out the neighbor’s house that was only a few short feet away. The wind picked up, frozen air slipping through her sweater like needles or spears. Her head turned up and she saw the stars, bright and cold, in the sky. There seemed to be more of them, now, and they were so much closer than they had ever before been.

She pulled her sweater more tightly around her shoulder, a thin warden against the night. She turned back to the dark and empty house. It was going to be a long night.


	2. Smell

Her clothes still reeked of smoke. No matter what she did the scent wouldn’t go away. It wouldn’t let her forget.

Yesterday she burned her parents’ bodies.

They had lain upstairs in the sick bed, the bed where they died, for too long. Anne had lost days in the grip of her own fever, hadn’t realized that there was anything wrong until it was too late, until she walked into her childhood home and discovered them lying there. All she could think as she stood in that room and stared at that bed was that she wanted to go home.

In the end, burning had been the only option. She couldn’t leave them there, not like that, and she was still too weak to dig a hole deep enough to bury them both. Fire was her only option.

She almost couldn’t do it; their bodies were too heavy, their bed sheets too soiled. But by evening she stood in the backyard, covered in sweat and grime and other, fouler things, and watched her parents’ funeral pyre.

Her clothes still reeked of smoke. And she couldn’t forget.


	3. Touch

A hand on her arm and the sound of breath in her hear jerked her out of a deep, dreamless sleep. She stared into the darkness of the room, her heart stuttering in her chest. There was something in the room with her.

A crash rolled through the stillness, something heavy falling in the garage. Anne’s breathing picked up and she curled into the wall, the twin instincts to flee and hide fighting each other in her chest.

The word Run echoed in her ears, whether it was thought or voice she didn’t care, and she ran. She had just enough coherence to reach down and grab the bag lying by her bed, a few bare essentials piled up inside. She rolled open the window right over her head, the lawn a few tantalizing inches above her, and shimmied outside.

She ran across the yard, adrenaline pushing her forward, oblivious to the cold cement on her bare feet or the wind that cut through her t-shirt. A voice shouted behind her and she swerved into a neighbor’s yard, cutting back and down, feet following short-cuts forged when she was small.

She ran until she couldn’t anymore, until her legs gave out and she collapsed under a tree. She curled around her bag and waited for someone to find her, for the sun to rise, for the night to be over. She panted on the ground and wondered if she would ever wake up.


	4. Listen

The birds sang as she broke into a stranger’s house. Her hands shook as she pushed open the unlocked door, barely-controlled panic crawling under her skin. She needed to eat, she needed to sleep, she needed things she couldn’t even remember anymore. 

The house felt empty, that hollowed out and expectant feeling that homes had when their families were gone. Old mail and magazines were piled on the nearest table and a few shoes littered the floor. Whoever had lived there had meant to come back.

The water in the kitchen faucet still run and Anne took huge, gulping drinks, using her hands to scoop it to her mouth. It dribbled down her chin and soaked into the neck of her t-shirt. She didn’t think water had ever tasted so good.

The cupboards weren’t full but there was peanut butter and some stale crackers to dip into the jar. She ate as she rummaged through the rooms, digging through closets and dressers. She found a pair of shoes that almost fit and a wealth of socks and toiletries: a new tooth brush, band-aids, soap, deodorant. 

A glint of gold caught her eye and she stopped for a moment to pick a necklace up off of the floor. The leaf pendant twirled in the air, the metal glowing in the sunlight. She put it down carefully on a nearby table, she didn’t need it and she couldn’t take it. It wasn’t good to take mementos from the dead.

She pulled the cushions off of the couch and rearranged them on the floor, more comfortable there than in empty beds still full of other people’s dreams. A chipmunk chittered, shrill and angry, through the closed window as her eyes drifted shut. She just needed a little sleep.


	5. Moon

A baby wailed through the darkness, its screams a knife cutting through the dark. Anne pulled herself up into a sitting position, limbs stiff and feet sore. She’d slept the day away, dreams of running, heart pounding, chasing her through the long hours. Her entire body ached and she didn’t want to get up.

The shrill crying didn’t stop. It wound through her head until she found herself standing up, bag in hand, standing outside in the dew-sodden grass. The moon shone down, half-full and silver, brighter than she remembered it being. The screams spiraled out of the woods that loomed at the edge of the yard, the trees tall and gray in the half light.

She followed the circling sound into the dark. The cold snap of fall had settled into the air but leaves still canopied above her head, their colors only starting to change. Her eyes slowly adjusted to the dark even as the world around her faded and blurred. She knew, on some level, that she shouldn’t be out there, that she shouldn’t be alone in the dark, but she had to find that lost child. The thought of it, alone and terrified, drove her on. 

The trees broke and she saw a toddler, hardly big enough to walk, sitting alone on an old, rutted path. Its breathing hitched and it reached out to her, face red and streaked with tears and snot.

She sped up. She was only a few feet away when she stumbled, feet suddenly not enough to hold her up. She fell to her knees and gasped, hands scraping on the ground. She stared, eyes wide and frozen, as the child began to change.

Its eyes widened and its skin grayed, limbs lengthening as it levered itself upright. Anne blinked and it lumbered above her, huge and world-ending. She blinked again and a cold hand was wrapped around her wrist and pulling her up.

“Come on!” A girl with wide eyes yelled and pulled her away, away from the monster, away from the path and the trees and the darkness waiting there. The sound of the river rushed in front of them and the girl pulled her into a boat bobbing on the water.

The girl looked at her, eyes bright in her thin face, and pushed off from the shore.


	6. Tears

The boat bobbed on the dark water. Anne’s hand gripped the side, splinters threatening her clamped fingers. She didn’t know what was happening to her.

She stared up at the moon as it peeked over the surrounding trees. Her heart still pounded in her chest, adrenaline and fear her only evidence that she was still alive.

“Where do you want to go?” The girl asked, her voice rising and falling with the lapping of the waves; her savior, her imaginary friend, the girl too lucky to be real.

“I don’t know,” Anne said. A lump rose in her throat, a sob or a scream. “Away,” she whispered.

The boat eased forward, slowly gathering momentum as it glided downstream. Anne panted around the block in her throat, the weight in her chest.

She had nowhere to go.

Tears seeped down her face, the wind drying them into itchy scabs. Her breath hitched and she buried her face in her arms to muffle her howls.

The world was dark and she had nowhere to go.


	7. Spirit

Mist rose around them as the boat settled against the shore. Anne could hardly see two feet in front of her, the world white and gray in the near light. The boat creaked beneath them, the steady dip-glide of the river stilled by the bank beneath the bow. 

Anne stepped out of the boat, stumbling a little as her feet dipped into the muddy shore. She turned back to look at the girl who had saved her, whose name she still didn’t know. Fog whipped around the girl’s young face; she seemed to shimmer and flow with it, as light and insubstantial as the world that drifted around them.

“What’s next?” Anne asked because it was the easiest thing to say, the easiest feeling to unravel from the knot in her chest. It was so good to have someone to talk to again.

“You can do whatever you want,” the girl said, her voice a whisper, the words ripples in the air. “But this is as far as I can go.”

Anne froze, heart leaping in her chest. She’d been so close to something that she desperately wanted and couldn’t explain. She was so tired of being alone.

The girl smiled, her face soft as if she knew, as if she’d looked inside and plucked out all of the things that Anne couldn’t say. “I can’t go and you can’t stay, not with me,” she explained, voice gentle and calm. “The world is a different place, now. I wish--” she sighed, the sound like pebbles in a stream.

Anne nodded, her mouth shut tight. She looked down, her eyes fixed on the way her borrowed shoes looked, buried in the mud, dull grass bent around their dirty white edges. She could already feel the cold morning dew seeping in.

“Goodbye,” she heard. A whisper, a plea. She looked up and the girl was already gone, swallowed up by the fog. She’d left nothing behind.


	8. Taste

Dusk gathered under the tree branches. Before everything the changing seasons would always catch Anne by surprise, one minute the world would be bright summer and then she would blink her eyes and it would be winter, dark and cold. Now she could feel the way the days shortened, the minutes she lost with each longer night.

The light was going and she needed to find a place to sleep.

When she was little she had had a habit of wandering away, exploring and dreaming. Every new path, new place, had been the beginning of some adventure, a chance for something new. Now there were too many paths lined with nightmares.

A branch snapped and her entire body jerked before she froze, rabbit-like, head up and eyes narrowed as she scanned the road. The world was still around her, silent save for the breeze rattling leaves high in the trees and the noise of some small animal scurrying around in the dirt.

She moved forward carefully, feet as quiet as she could make them. The road bent and she followed it around. The trees opened onto a pock-marked parking lot and an empty gas station.

Maybe this was a place where she could rest.


	9. Hunger

Anne pushed the gas station door open. A bell jingled, sending a bolt of adrenaline shooting through her veins. Silence and full shelves pulled her further into the shop. Her stomach growled, loud in the stillness. She hadn’t eaten in so long that she’d moved beyond pain in her stomach to a bone deep emptiness. She’d gone past hunger and out the other side to something deeper and more demanding.  
Cellophane crinkled and she shoved a snake cake into her mouth. She hardly tasted it before swallowing and stuffing another one into her mouth. She didn’t need to taste it, it was the best thing she’d ever eaten.

A long squeak shot through the air, the sound of metal scraping along metal. Anne ducked down behind the shelving and scurried backwards to the closest corner, the sound of her panting breath loud in her ears.

Soft steps lurched across the floor. She wrapped her arms around her legs. She needed to be small, invisible, to not be there.

A man appeared above her between one rapid heartbeat and the next. His face was flushed and his tattered shirt was covered in filth.

He leaned over her. “Hey there, little girl,” he puffed out on a foul breath. He reached down and pulled her to her feet, grip hard and bruising on her arm. He grabbed her hair with his other hand and yanked her head back, the pull bringing tears to her eyes. “You gonna pay for what you took?”

She kicked him, hard, in his shin and he yelled. He tossed her sideways. Her head hit the cashier’s counter and she gasped as she fell, spots swimming in front of her eyes.

“You’ll pay for that , too,” the man snarled. He grabbed her ankle and pulled her across the floor. Her fingers scrabbled across the dirty linoleum for a hold, a respite, anything. He flung her over and her hand swung out and away, fingertips glancing on something smooth and round hidden snug under the register. She grabbed at it, desperate, and swung.

The bat whistled through the air and hit the side of the man’s head with a meaty thump. She hit again without thinking, reflex, and kicked out, catching him in the jaw as he folded at the waist. He fell over, hand grabbing the side of his head, and moaned.

Anne surged to her feet and hit him again and again and again until the moaning stopped, until all she could hear was her own harsh breath and the dull thud of the bat.

She stumbled backwards, away from the thing that had once been a man. She looked down at the blood spattered over her shirt, felt it sticky and warm on her hands.

What had she done?


	10. Shadow

Anne spent the night in the gas station. She dragged the body outside, gagging while she did it. She vomited beside it, the sound, the sight, the memory spilling half-digested bile into the tall grass. When she looked up, wiping her mouth, wishing for water, shadows gathered under the trees. Night was coming.

The station was her safest choice for safety while she slept. She went back in and ignored the blood trail on the floor, the place where her flung body had knocked plastic tubs off the counter, candy and junk strewn across the room.

She threw the lock on the glass door and then pushed the heaviest rack of shelves she could move in front of it. Her hands shook so hard that candy danced on its shelf. She took a deep breath and closed and secured the door to the dark backroom. She gagged again at the stench that blew past as she shut it tight. She didn't want to think about what might be back there.

She dreamed that night, curled small in a corner, baseball bat wiped clean and standing sentry. Shuffling steps lurched through the night, dragging viscera behind them. Hands clawed at the windows leaving bloody prints that smeared across the dirty glass. Foul breath hissed in her ear as she cried. Dark things huddled under the trees and snuffled at the door.

The next day she stepped back out into the world, circles under her eyes and the bat in her hand. Giant paw prints circled in the gravel and the body was gone.


	11. Light

The dog came at dawn.

Anne had had a fire burning already. She hadn’t slept well and even though instinct told her it wasn’t safe, that light would guide things to her she had needed the light. The darkness covered her in a smothering blanket and the trees that closed in on her, only spitting distance from the side of the road. 

It wasn’t really a road—not in the way she’d always understood a road to be, with black asphalt and wide painted lines—but rather two grooves worn into the soil by years of constant travel. But it was a path and she needed something, anything, to lead her on her way. She’d trudged down it for a few days, pointed in a random direction, her only companions the sky above and the wind at her back.

She was so tired of being alone, of being afraid, of just being.

She caught the eyes deep in the overgrown grass, glinting in the firelight. They glowed gold for a second and then silver, two flashes close down to the ground. Anne grabbed her bat, reflexively, every muscle tense, the familiar, bitter, taste of adrenaline in the back of her throat. She had killed a raccoon a few nights before, a clever thing that had tried to rip into her bag and get to the food stored inside. She’d bashed its head in, a part of her screaming about hurting an animal that was just trying to keep itself alive.

But she ranked higher than some random raccoon. She was a killer, now. She did what she had to do.

She raised from sitting into a crouch, ready to run or pounce at any moment. The eyes creeped closer, inch by inch, whether stalking her as prey or terrified to come closer, she didn’t know.

Their stand-off commenced, time frozen between them as the sky slowly lightened from black to gray. Dawn was coming. In the new light Anne’s foe came into clearer view, a brindled dog, hunched low to the ground. It looked like it had seen hard times, fur caked in mud, ribs visible even from a distance. Hungry dogs were the most dangerous of all.

She stood up slowly, grip tightening around her bat. The dog froze, eyes laser-focused on her own. She decided to take a chance.

She slowly, ever so slowly, moved her left hand from bat to pocket. The dog watched her, not breaking her gaze, as she carefully pulled a hunk of jerky out of her over-sized hoodie. It growled low, a warning, lips starting to curl. Her heart raced, but she was willing to risk an attack. She had to know for sure, whether it was completely feral or just as lost as her.

She extended her arm, ever so carefully, telegraphing her throw, and pitched the jerky straight to the dog.

It barked, loud, at her throw, and shot up out of the grass. She grabbed her bat, hoping that she wouldn’t have to fight this animal off too. She was so tired of death. But before it leaped, the dog caught the scent of the jerky. Instead of jumping on her, it pounced on the treat, gobbling it up in one swallow.

Anne took a deep breath.

The dog circled the spot where the jerky had fallen, sniffing for more treats. When it didn’t find anything it stopped and looked right at her, its body straight and upright. It didn’t come any closer, but it also didn’t attack. It was a beginning.

Anne relaxed her hold on the bat. She set it down, still careful to keep her movements broad and obvious. She didn’t want to spook the thing and ruin all of the progress she’d made.

The sun rose behind her as she set a few more pieces of jerky down at the edge of her camp. She took a few deliberate steps away and the dog came forward, closer to her than before. It gobbled everything up and looked at her for more.

Anne smiled. She was no longer alone.


End file.
